The Scientific Method, Part 1

In science classrooms around the country, children are told that there is just one way to get information: by applying the scientific method. They are told that make a "theory," test it through experimentation, and verify their experiments, after which they still aren't officially sure of anything and have to keep testing and making new theories! If this sounds like a tedious and, ultimately, pointless way of obtaining knowledge, then your hearing is just fine.

The scientific method may be sufficient for obtaining some kinds of knowledge, but it is worthless for finding out anything with absolute certainty. And teaching this method to the exclusion of all others denies our children the knowledge of how to gain information through more natural means. For example:

Divine revelation. God often speaks to his followers in one way or another, be it through flash of insight, disembodied voice, or divine image in a water stain or toast burn. The meaning of these messages may be ambiguous at times, but it certainly exists.

Intuition. Have you ever had a feeling about something that turned out to be true? You might have been kept off of a cross-country flight by a feeling of impending doom, for example, and when the rest of your family went ahead without you, you called them upon their arrival only to discover that, horribly verifying your feeling of worry, your luggage was now thousands of miles away. Or maybe you walk into a room and see a man standing there, and when you see him you are overcome with a feeling of annoyance before you even realize that it's your brother-in-law.

Tradition. There are plenty of facts that science does not recognize but that are so old they must be true. The fact that ground up, dried bits of endangered animals can better your sex life, or that rearranging the furniture can bring luck and inner peace may fail every "scientific" test, but that doesn't prove that they don't work.

Ancient writings. People who were alive hundreds (or even thousands) of years ago knew many things that we have forgotten and were wiser because they lived in simpler times or because God was telling them what to write. If these ancient writings contradict science -- by saying the earth doesn't move or revealing that bats are birds, for example -- then isn't it science that should be questioned more closely?

Religion. There are countless religious institutions that are more than happy to tell you what the real truth is.

Belief. What's wrong with knowing something is true just because you feel deeply that it should be true? Will Fido go to Doggy heaven? Of course! Do fairies exist? Undoubtedly! Is O.J. Simpson innocent? Absolutely!

The scientific method also falls apart when supernatural phenomena are investigated. For example, the presence of someone who is not a whole-hearted believer and has no emotional stake in the success of a psychic experiment may cause that experiment to fail. And scientists might have you believe that a psychic performer is a fraud just because he has repeatedly been shown to use fraudulent methods, but science is at a complete loss to prove that he wasn't using his psychic abilities on those occasions when he wasn't caught.

Scientists also poo-poo some evidence just because it hurts their ego or doesn't fit into their favored world view. Let's say that a psychic helps police find a missing woman by telling police to look near water where there's a number two, and that the missing woman is found in a damp basement on a Tuesday, scientists would claim that this was "too ambiguous" to be evidence and shake their heads sadly when it headlined Fox evening news. All because science is embarassed about being completely unable to help the police in this way.

Let's look at another famous failure of science. When people started bringing the first meteorites to scientists, claiming that the rocks fell from the sky, scientists thought the idea completely ridiculous. "Rocks can't fall from the sky," said the scientists, and encouraged the poor ignorant folks to put their rocks back in their heads from whence the came. Eventually it was proven that the rocks did indeed fall from the sky, showing once again that the scientists didn't know what they were talking about. But did the scientists change their minds? Well, yes they did, but only after the evidence was so significant that they really had no choice.

So why limit our children to one set of tools for finding a reality of their own? No reason we can think of.